State v. Blackwelder’s Empirical Analysis
1983
Citation profile
158 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 158 later decisions — most recently March 2012 · most notably State v. Stokes (1987), State v. Allen (2005)
158 state decisions
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on State v. Ahearn · State v. Jones · State v. Melton · State v. Chatman · 58 N.C. App. 330 - State v. Davis
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 158 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“the focus should be on whether the facts of the case disclose excessive brutality, or physical pain, psychological suffering, or dehumanizing aspects not normally present in that offense.”
7 later decisions quote this exact passage“While the Court of Appeals in Medlin applied the correct standard, i.e. whether the offense was excessively brutal beyond that normally present in any assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill inflicting serious injury, the court ignored, to defendant’s favor, that the victim was shot five times. Where proof of one act constituting an offense is sufficient to sustain a defendant’s conviction, multiple acts of the same offense are relevant to the question of sentencing, including whether the offense charged was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage“When the facts justify the giving of the instruction of the inference of malice arising as a matter of law from the use of a deadly weapon and it is in fact given, or when it could have been given had defendant not entered a plea of guilty, evidence of the use of a deadly weapon is deemed necessary to prove the element of malice for purposes of precluding its use as an aggravating factor at sentencing.”
2 later decisions quote this exact passage
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.